What nutrients should I consume before and after training?
I recently received a message from a friend with the following question:
„Are there any special recommendations before or after exercise regarding the amounts of the respective nutrients?“
Here is my answer:
On the one hand, the question is very easy to answer, but on the other hand it is also super difficult:
Simple: If you do sports (I assume strength training and endurance training), you have an increased need for macro and micronutrients. It makes sense, for example, to drink a protein shake with carbohydrates after training (or to eat something equivalent).
Difficult: Who is training? What does they train? How experienced are they? What is their current diet like? These are all questions that can be important.
A competitive athlete has very different needs and the timing of nutrients around training can be very important.
But for us ordinary people, that's not so important... no, actually not important at all. I would recommend that active people increase their protein intake to 1.5 grams/kg body weight. This corresponds to about 1-2 palms of protein per meal plus a snack of one palm. For overweight people, I recommend 2 grams/kg of lean mass - i.e. body weight without fat. Similarly, you can also use your desired weight for the calculation.
A shake like this after training is great for motivation and gives you a good feeling. But you don't have to do it within the first 30 minutes after training.
The so-called anabolic window is actually a barn door, and the absorption capacity for proteins in protein muscle synthesis is increased around 72 hours after a sufficiently strenuous workout (the key word here is “strenuous” 😉).
And this is my criticism of the idea of optimizing nutrition around training: the question should not be when should I eat what and how much, but rather:
Is your training stimulus even sufficient for your goal?
Are you getting enough sleep?
Are you eating enough protein?
We tend to make simple things extremely complicated. Nutrition is definitely one of them. That doesn't mean that nutrition is simple. But if we stick to the basics, that's usually enough.
